Ivory Terminal

This year, I gave in and got a Blu Ray player to complement my first TV, and other than the hilarious-if -not-waiting boot up times (JVM!) everything has been working perfectly. The discs look great, they are no more expensive to rent than DVD’s, etc.

All was well until I actually splurged and bought a disc. I decided to grad the Blu Ray version of HBO’s “Generation Kill”. An excellent derivative of the book, and the latest work by several people associated with “The Wire”, which I consider to be the greatest television show of all time with nothing in second place. I was willing to support the series in its own right, but I hoped that by purchasing it might somehow help “The Wire” to get to Blu Ray.

So, with a few friends over, after waiting for my Sharp BD-HP22U player to book up, we inserted the first disc and… Nothing. The player refused to do anything, showing a dead black screen. When I tried to access the menu I got nothing, and when I attempted to advance the scene, the player showed that it was already on scene 4 of 81 and would not move.

I am not entirely sure who is at fault, the Blu Ray consortium, Sharp, or HBO, but it hardly matters. In front of an audience of four, I think I accidentally sold three Apple TVs when we decided to watch a movie on that instead. Sharp certainly did not sell any BD players that night.

I am now a few weeks into waiting for answer from Sharp about what is going on, and getting increasingly aggravated at the unhelpful responses. At this point, every time I insert a disc, I wonder if it will work, not something that one should be thinking about a high-end product. To save myself from an unsuccessful trip to the video store, I have been getting HD movies on the Apple TV whenever possible, which actually ends up being slightly cheaper due to some weird tax/fee from Blockbuster.

I have not yet decided what to do with the player if I have more problems, but I am seriously starting to doubt the future of Blu Ray. The picture and sound are great, but I honestly do not feel that my experience is lesser when watching a good movie on the Apple TV or a DVD. I hope they get it together…

I am almost reluctant to jump to the defense of Apple, but today’s released Q1 smartphone sales are completely misleading.  Many sites are making a big deal out of the fact that the Blackberry 8300-Series, the “Curve”, outsold the iPhone in Q1 2009.  What no one is mentioning is that on most carriers, the Curve is now available without a smartphone contract.  This means that handsets are going out at a heavily-subsidized price, yet Blackberry and the carriers are not receiving their data plan revenues.  It seems to me that the Curve is being picked up in droves by consumers interested in the perceived status of a smartphone (plus the great keyboard as text messaging become ubiquitous) without the high monthly cost of data and Blackberry E-mail plans. 

My guess is that the Curve is now a loss leader for RIM, who hopes that the users will think of a Blackberry when they are ready to get a true smartphone. 

This is not an attempt to discount RIM’s great quarter, but in terms of revenues, a Blackberry without a Blackberry plan is not exactly a smartphone.  Follow the money…

Lately I have been involved in a lot of talks about encryption.  As laptops become more important, and people are literally storing their digital lives on them, some level of encryption is a good idea to protect data in the event of theft.

Most of the time when encryption comes up, breaches are the first thing mentioned.  ”I heard that by freezing the RAM you can take data off of a sleeping computer”, etc.  Most of these claims are likely true, but like anything else, data protection is a continuum.  For the purpose of this discussion, we will compare encryption to cars.  Triple AES-768 will be an Abrams Battle Tank (there is harder out there, but it is not going to move around much), and a system password will be a convertible.  An Abrams and a convertible both have measures to protect the interior of a vehicle.  Even though an Abrams is comparatively impenetrable, you see a lot more convertibles on the road.  Why is this when the smaller car does not do nearly as good of a job at protecting items in it?  To begin, an Abrams costs millions of dollars, weighs 70 tons, and is not normally accessible to the public.  To a novice computer user, the AES-standard is an impossible concept.  It is difficult to implement, requires a great deal of specialized knowledge, and is slow and bulky.  Since our hypothetical user would at least like some protection from unexpected bad weather, a convertible is in order.  It is cheap to run, accessible, and sporty.

You never hear people, even the Phil & Ted stroller-pushing new moms, mention that they want an A1 Battle Tank.  Many try with an Escalade or the like, but once again, there is a continuum.  They do not want the tank because they understand the costs and limitations of a 70-ton treaded vehicle (not to mention tearing up the subdivision).  They understand that depleted-uranium armor is not needed to get from home to day care and back.  

However, when we transfer the analogy back to the digital world, this understanding goes away.  Everyone all of a sudden wants the most hardened security in the world, regardless of their status as a target or their activities.  I manage to offend many people when I mention that the weakest link in any modern encryption platform is the user.  They may get tired of slow read times and turn off disk encryption, they may use the same key for encryption or computer protection as they use to log into Gmail.  They may write the key on a post it and leave it on their monitor, or tell a friend their password or e-mail it to themselves in case they forget.  Even if they do not do these things, passwords are incredibly uncreative, and the concept of a passphrase is not yet mainstream.  Knowing full well that most users will do things like this, it is hardly worth debating the relative merits and flaws of various encryption algorithms and standards.  Users also need to understand their status as a target.  Someone must be highly motivated to even attempt to guess a password, yet alone break disk encryption.  If they are sufficiently motivated, any casual protection standards will not be a significant deterrent, and it is always a good idea to have a backup plan if you lose your data or if someone else gets it.  Things like identity theft are a huge pain, but armoring yourself so heavily that you stand out from the pack will honestly just make people curious.  Like the tank, there is no point having the armor unless you are willing to go through the training to operate it, and spend a great deal of time with maintenance.  An Abrams with the keys left on a panel marked “car keys” in the garage is an awfully expensive front.

My personal data is protected to the highest standards that I can understand and maintain, and I am willing to accept performance slowdowns to compensate.  However, beyond a certain point, my data protection priority shifts from protection from theft to protection from loss.  If a dedicated team decides to devote tremendous resources, they will likely be able to obtain portions of my data.  However, it would take an incredible feat to remove my data in a way that I too would lose it.  Part of my redundancy involves offsite storage transfered online, and it is ironic that in choosing this redundancy, I expose my files to the wild land of the Internet.  Even if you hide yourself in an impenetrable cocoon, you then have to worry about redundancy, and if you are paranoid enough, multiple site redundancy.  At some point, one must bow to reason and realize that if someone wants your data badly enough, they will be able to obtain it, and the harder your security, the more likely it is that you will be the link in the chain that gives.  A tank is not necessary to protect your family photos, just make sure you have your top up when you go out in bad weather…

If you are worried about your protection standards, just make a better password, and read up about data protection.  As you understand a little more, you can switch to some home directory or full-disk options, and fall down the spiral of paranoia from there.  

Until recently, the mobile phone has been a quiet place in the world of telemarketing. As someone that uses mobile phones for all of my lines, I have greatly appreciated the lack of interruption. Considering that my lifetime score to positively responding to an unsolicited telemarketing call is zero, this has been a great relationship for both parties. Thanks to laws, lack of phonebooks, opt-outs, and so on, most of the calls that I receive are wanted, or at least not out of place.

Now that mobile phones are not only commonplace but even replacing landlines for mainstream consumers, the telemarketers must have needed a profit-saving change.

My blissful silence was halted by an e-mail this afternoon from GE’s capital arm announcing that the terms to my service were changing:

“You agree that GE Money Bank and any other owner or servicer of your account may contact you about your account using any contact information or cell phone numbers you provide (whether previously provided or provided in the future).

You expressly agree to the use of any automatic telephone dialing system and/or artificial or prerecorded voice when contacting you, even if you are charged for the call under your phone plan.

The above provision will become part of your account agreement if you consent to the provision by (i) using your account more than 15 days after this notice is delivered to you or (ii) keeping your account open after March 15, 2009. If you do either of these things, we will conclude that you have consented to being contacted on your cell phone in this way. If you do not want to be contacted on your cell phone in this way, you may call us at ***-***-**** at any time.”

I am left with two choices: Close my account ASAP, or agree to be bothered by all kinds of robot nonsense not stopped by conventional preventions because I have explicitly agreed to the contact.

Normally, I would instantly send them packing, but after reading an article on Wired.com about similar changes to American Express terms (discussing the security issue with the change which I did not even consider), I can only assume this change will quickly spread over the whole credit card community. Although this is an exceedingly aggravating change of terms, I am not sure that I am willing to give up credit cards as a whole. I have already called the opt-out number I was given, and opted out my mobile phone. Based on the wording of the message above, I will be interested to see if my account is closed.

I am not looking forward to having similar terms added to all kinds of phone-based (and unrelated) services. Everyone has been asking how Twitter and Facebook and the like are going to make money, and I am afraid that this is part of the answer.

 Last week, hulu.com was forced to remove Boxee media center compatibility. As someone currently calibrating my very first television (not a typo), I find this maddening.

Admittedly, my willingness to get a television centered on the fact that I could use it primarily as a large computer monitor. I imagine that computing/viewing will be about a four to one ratio. Personally, I have never been a cable television customer, and I do not intend to ever be one. To me, viewing Hulu content via Boxee would have added a set of eyeballs to Hulu content without taking away a customer from broadcast or cable television. It would have been a win for everyone. Little did I know that when I signed up for Hulu (after signing up for Boxee), the content stream already had a kill date.

The biggest advantage of Boxee is the easy interface with remote controls. I could use Boxee without having a keyboard and mouse on the couch, something rather important to me when watching content with other people. I have been busy ripping my movies (all owned) to a hard disk so they are all available on the panel.

I set up my media center around Boxee, not around Hulu, and I almost feel bad about punishing Hulu’s great model by no longer watching it. However, I just do not see myself breaking out the keyboard to access Hulu programming. I would like to have some space between myself and the keyboard when entertaining myself or others.

I realize that I am in a small minority being so averse to television, but I feel like it is worth mentioning that there are technologically inclined users with disposable income for whom Hulu via Boxee added net eyeballs with no corresponding loss to traditional broadcasting methods.

Related, it must be a humungous victory for Boxee, OSX, and Linux to have a media center that terrifies the broadcasters before even having a public Windows version. My guess is that anybody hacking an Apple TV (is there a use for them stock?) or creating a dedicated computer-based media center was probably not a huge cable customer in the first place, and in this case the content owners are angering an enthusiast market that will find a way around them out of spite in addition to necessity.

And now back to my regularly scheduled computer interface…

Previously, I wrote about how Facebook was becoming another Myspace, and it was time for the nerds to move on. Taking my own advice, I deleted both accounts today.

As when leaving a job, I thought for a moment about sending a mass message, but that seemed to be completely besides the point. I did use both services to keep up with marginal friends, mostly from previous geographic locations. In my haste, I will lose contact information for some of them, but I figure if they need me, I am easier to find than I would like to be, and if I truly need them and a search is not working, I can always write a mutual aquintance and get contact info.

The process was a little different for the two services, and I would give Facebook a win* **. Deleting a Myspace account was a surprisingly easy task. I think it shows how little money these sites make per user by how easy it is to delete. Try to do the same with a Verizon wireless account (still pending for me, and it is sure not making me want to use them ever again).

I am going to keep my Twitter account for now, figuring that it is good for most of what I used other social networks for, and Twitter is at least on the rise of the social network lifecycle.

*Only easy because instructions to permanently delete an account was the top FAQ after the privacy thing.

**Account is only deleted if one does not log into the service for 14 days, an impossibly long time in the virtual world.

As the British government should well know by now, the problem of hiring people who know what they’re talking about is that they tell you what you don’t want to hear.  

Chairman of the UK’s Government Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, Proffessor David J Nutt, has advised the government to downgrade the legal classification of LSD and MDMA from Class A down to Class B.  In the US system, this would be tantamount to reducing these drugs from their current Schedule 1 status to a non-existant grey area between Schedule 2 and 3.

Side word; A quick search has left me without a cirriculum vitae for Dr. Nutt, but I have found evidence that he at least has had graduate students and he conducts research (gasp, shock).  You would think that being chairman of a nation’s governmental council would be enough of an indicator that you have the right stuff. But, you know government…

Some quick words on British and American drug policy and history:  Britain dropped marijuana from a Class B to a Class C drug, only to bring it up to Class B again this year (1/26/09).  In the United States, marijuana still stands tall next to all other drugz that DARE told you were bad, m’kay.  The legal classification for Meth Amphetamine, in both countries, defines it as being more safe than LSD and MDMA (Schedule 1 vs. 2; Class A vs. Class B).  Now, if you cook it in your basement, that’s a prison sentence.  But, if you get it in a schedule 2 pill, you’re in the clear, because of meth’s obvious beneficial medical properties…  Which, I might add, are totally more valid than psychologists recommendations for MDMA therapy for numerous disorders, most importantly PTSD.  I could explode over the court cases of good people apparently doing the wrong thing But, the ACMD gives me hope that government will pay attention to reality over ignorance.

 The digitalization of health care records is snowballing in the media. Many of the problems not related to the budget for this activity center on privacy and data security.

Departing for a moment from the conventional arguments, I want to explore why this privacy is necessary, and if there is anything that could be done to reduce the need for privacy, and the gravity of the breaches that will certainly come.

Our current healthcare system is obviously on the over-the-hill side of an insurance system life-cycle. Given a lengthy time period, any open insurance system will end in failure, as the rising premiums price out more and more potential contributors. For a moment, accept that we have a market failure in the US for health insurance. What do we do? The free market answer is to let the system fail, take down the health insurers and the current health care pricing models with it, and then start over with another free market system. If we were talking about something that was not life saving, everyone would be screaming to let it go and rebuild already, as the population does about the bank and automaker woes. However, due to the incredibly emotional nature of health care, and the dire individual consequences of having a system in flux, prepackaged bankruptcy and reorganization does not seem to be an acceptable course of action.

Assuming that the free market approach will end soon in the health insurance companies going under, this gives us more freedom to explore other options. For health care, the obvious solution continually centers on nationalization. I say that understanding fully that my individual health care would probably get worse, at least for awhile. Many people with premium health insurance options feel the same way, and state that they are compromising by either simply saying no to another option, or accepting the thought of a nationalized healthcare system but insisting that there be supplemental paid insurance (a model that would compromise the baseline healthcare, and get us right back to the problem we are experiencing now). As a population, we treat healthcare in a much different way than cars or banks when we discuss its possible failure, so why are we so averse to treating it differently in “normal” operation?

Now armed with the assumption of health care nationalization, let’s move on to the privacy aspect, and why it is important right now. In our culture, being sick is often embarrassing, and many choose to hide their illnesses from friends, family, coworkers, and as we have seen lately, investors. This behavior is understandable, as there are currently all types of discrimination against the sick. Some of this discrimination comes from the fact that the sick might not be covered by health insurance, and if they are denied their claim, they are more or less out of luck because of the comical healthcare pricing in our current system. At the same time, the illnesses are often discovered at much more advanced stages because we have a medical care system that discourages preventative care.

The argument that our system discourages preventative care can be summed up by the “pre-existing condition”. If one switches providers or loses insurance for a period of time, as is common in the US since we have a system primarily dependent on employer-based health care, they may be ineligible for insured healthcare from a new provider for conditions diagnosed previously. This creates an incentive to remain ignorant of health problems so they will not have to be paid out of pocket in the event of an emergency. By creating a system where the insured have an incentive not to catch possible problems early, and to avoid things like genetic testing, we have defeated our insurance system from within. The current system forces out many of the sick, but does not give discounts to the healthiest users to make up for this. This provides a disincentive for the healthiest users to participate in insurance, and the system collapses from there.

Because of insurance exclusion in our current system, privacy is of the upmost importance, so much so that individuals often prefer to remain ignorant of their own impending health problems for fear of being excluded from insurance. A nationalized health care program would remove this disincentive for knowledge, and would likely make the need for privacy less important, as an acknowledgement of a medical problem would not lead to insurance exclusion. If there was not a possible penalty for learning about genetic conditions or future medical problems, many more individuals would likely prefer to know the medical histories and futures, and would not have the same fear of sharing their findings with the medical system. Obviously, medical records should not be made open to the public, but it seems misguided that this country is attempting to build the Fort Knox of data repositories to help continue such an obviously failed insurance and care system.

This is almost a little hard for me to admit, but I bought my first track from iTunes today.  Most of the time, I buy music from dance sites like Beatport and Release Records, but when I purchase more mainstream music, I have until now turned to Amazon.  I have always refused purchasing music from iTunes because I will not support paid DRMed songs.  Now that iTunes has removed DRM from their tracks, I suppose I have no problem with the service, and I had previously created an account for the App Store anyway.  There is a lot of nerd hostility towards iTunes, but mine was strictly limited to the DRM that aggravated the non-techies around me.  I have found the podcast manager and net radio portions to be excellent, and truly enjoy the program.  The searchable format and auto-file-creation for music is great too.

I have still been using Amazon out of habit, but tonight, I was shocked to find a track that was not available on Amazon, but had several mixes on iTunes.  I purchased it, and have no complaints so far.

I may have to start buying music on iTunes, because I am sure not buying any applications.  I could care less about games on the iPhone, and I am getting frustrated at the slow realization by Apple that the current terms of the SDK are stifling the next generation of productivity apps.  Apple may have already waited too long, allowing Blackberry to get their next generation of devices into service in the US.  I still have a Blackberry, and will continue to use it until I can access Bloomberg Anywhere and have an office suite that is not networked on the iPhone.  Until that point, my iPhone is my phone, browser, and a fun toy.  I am looking forward to adding “productivity device” to that list.  For now, I will enjoy my first iTunes song…

 Many news outlets have reported today that the Obama administration is shocked with the condition and age of the networked infrastructure in the White House. Most take it as an opportunity to take shots at the Government’s upgrade schedule, and a couple go as far as to mention the outgoing administration may have purposefully held off upgrades so the new team could pick their components. According to some of the reports, the phones did not even work in most of the offices.

I think this is shenanigans. The Bush/Cheney administration was almost inarguably the most hostile group to ever protect digital communications. There is absolutely no way that they were running on ancient and non-working hardware. I do not think the hardware is old, I think it is missing. Based on things like years of “lost” e-mail, missing backups, etc, I think that the former team’s technology went out on a barge and got sunk a few days ago.

Time and discovery are not likely to treat the administration well, but the “data leaks” (normally known as, “…saved for posterity”) will not come from the fiercely loyal staff.